Timor shifted nervously where he stood waiting for the ITSA guards to pass buy. They weren't human, which was lucky for him since humans often had drug sniffing dogs with them. Leave it to humans to train predators to sniff out drugs for them. He shifted again nervously. He didn't like this job, and had never intended it to go like this. He remembered just a year ago at home working in the shop with his sister Paxi and his parents, but then one of their rival business owners managed to upsell them at every turn and they had lost the shop to debt collectors. His father had been struck ill and their mother was busy taking care of him.
It was left up to him and to Paxi to make money for the family. Paxi was older than him so she knew more about what she was doing, and she had a natural talent for sales. She was working in advertising in one of those companies that typically targeted human tourism. Timor was too young for anyone to take him seriously in the industry, so he had been forced to find other ways to make money fr his family. He had sold drinks street side, cleaned pipes, washed windows on high rise buildings, pretty much any unsavory poorly paying job that he could think of until this opportunity came along.
He had been cornered in a back alley on the Tesraki home world and assumed that he was going to be robbed or kidnapped from the slave trade like had almost happened to him when he was young, though this time there would be no friendly human around to save him.
Instead they had invited him back to their warehouse and offered him a job.
It was nothing bit they had told him, and the amount they would be paying him was almost five times the amount he was being paid polishing botos.
They admitted that it was probably a little dangerous, but that was alright. They were sure someone like him would be able to handle it just fine. He knew flattery when he saw it, but he was willing to try anything at this point. All he had to do was bring the packages from point A to point B. As young and innocent as he was, it wouldn't look like much, and since the items he was carrying wasn't so well known in the universe at that point, they shouldn't have any detection equipment up for it yet.
So he had been given the ability to travel all around the universe as a drug runner.
It wasn't entirely an unpleasant job. Most of the time he got to just relax and wait for his next shuttle, but there were other times that he spent very scared that someone was going to find him. He heard that people who were caught running drugs ended up in the Turma supermax prison, and everyone knew what could happen to you there.
He shivered and sat up as he waited in line.
He was waved forward after a moment and let the desk agent scan his card.
He was sure they were gong to be able to tell how nervous he was, with the twitching of his right ear, but the Rundi seemed to have no interest in paying attention to him and moved him on.
Timor rested a hand on his belly where the package was resting. They had shaved off one layer of his fur to put on a prosthetic over that. Inside the containment unit the containers were hidden inside strange leaf shaped pieces that, when looked at on a scanner would appear as nothing more than the contents of his lunch.
Still, he hated this part the most.
He raised his hands over his head as he was ushered through the scanning machine.
There was a sharp beep and he was allowed to pass. A very bored looking Iotan leaned forward and ran a wand over his body before eventually waving him through. The vials never had any metal on them, made primarily of an organic sort of plastic, and since they were made up of human hormones, the scanner didn't detect any unusual chemicals. If it had been programmed to do that, than no human would have managed to make it through the system without setting off alarm bells.
He grabbed his bag from he conveyer belt and hurried down the hall.
Outside the window he could see the rest of the station glowing I the distance, a massive circular construction almost half a mile in diameter.
There was a pulse of blue form outside the window as one of the warp gates was activated, sending one of the small shuttles right through.
He was supposed to be visiting earth's moon today.
He was just glad that he didn't have to go down to earth itself, and so he sat with his bag and waited in the terminal for his shuttle to be called. It shouldn't take very long. The longest process in intergalactic travel these days was waiting to be boarded for warp which didn't generally take more than an hour or two.
Eventually he was called, scanning his wrist and watching as his boarding pass flashed on the screen before he was waved through. He found his seat in the back of the shuttle and sat down, not having to wait long as the others filtered on and the airlock opened. At least ten shuttles sped out two or three of them accompanying his ship to the warp gate.
Timor closed his eyes.
He hated warping, it always made him feel sick.
There was a bright flash of blue light and he felt a sudden compression around his body as if he was being squeezed through a tube.
A moment later they appeared.
This wouldn't be their last stop.
The humans hated the idea of having a warp gate so close to their mother planet and so only allowed a warp gate at Europa station and generally kept the location of Earth in it's orbit a great secret. The only people who were allowed to fly shuttles and ships to and from earth or mars were humans themselves and had to obey extensively vetted by the UNSC to preform such a task.
They were ushered off the shuttle and into the main landing bay where they were motioned over to another, larger ship. This one would be a small ship with a D class warp drive to get them to and from the other planets.
He had to wait there for almost an hour sitting and reading magazine s from the back of the chair in front of him before they were detached. He hated warping inside a ship with a warp reactor even more than he hated the warp gate. If he could have thrown up he would have, and even so he passed out for a few minutes before their flight made any sort of progress.
When the warp was over, he was sitting down looking at the Earth moon. It was bright white in the darkness, its ground characterized by a filmy sort of surface coating of the strange rock material. On its surface he could see work rovers venturing out into the wastes kicking up clouds of dust behind them. They orbited once before heading towards the bright side of the moon, which was tidally locked with the planet.
From this angle he could see earth glittering like a blue marble in the light above. The human planet was almost three fourth salt water, which had surprised everyone since they would have considered aquatic life to be the most prominent on the planet. However that was not the case, and most of the humans that lived here congregated on the massive broken landmasses in the center.
As he looked down, he saw a massive white spiral cloud forming in the sea just off the coast of one of those land masses. He had heard about earth storms before. Powerful hurricanes that formed in the midst of the ocean where hot air met cold air, turning them into spinning vortexes that could pick buildings from their foundations and toss them into the air.
Despite this, the humans still chose to live there with no complaint.
His sister had told him about that, so he wasn't entirely sure he believed them.
They landed in the moon port, the artificial gravity stabilizing a bubble like atmosphere for them to breathe. Timor still felt strange and a little helpless as he tried not to look at the burning white sun that was not so distant.
It was an odd thing, at one moment it was the black of space, and then as they passed into the atmospheric bubble the sky was suddenly blue, the silhouette of earth was nothing more than that, a silhouette in the distant sky.
He worried that, since the moon had no magnetic field, he might be bombarded by horrible amounts of radiation, but reading one of the pamphlets as he stepped off the shuttle, the humans claimed to have fixed that problem somehow. Something to do with massive magnetic field generating dynamos or something.
He didn't know much about science, so really couldn't have said.
From there he followed his instructions down and out of the space port and onto the main thoroughfare. Earth plants had been brought here and lined the walkways of the moon. They were strange plants, huge and twisted, resembling a mass of arteries veins and capillaries. The way they twisted one way and the other and had so many little protrusions made him mildly uncomfortable as he looked.
Even human plants were scary.
He continued to walk down the thoroughfare.
He was looking for a man.
The man was supposed to be pretty tall with tan skin and dark curly hair. He was supposed to be wearing a blue hat.
As he walked Timor couldn't help but notice the humans.
They were everywhere, lounging on benches and sitting under trees talking and laughing with each other. He wasn't scared of humans, but he did have a healthy caution around them. They were pack predators after all, and he had no idea if it was possible to awaken their instincts.
One of the humans looked up from a book he was reading, this one had light fur and was wearing dark shaded sunglasses. Below him, one of those other earth predators sat at his feet. It was large, tan and black and rested its head on it's paws eyes closed. Something about the scene seemed familiar but he shook it off and kept walking.
He passed b two other people on his way. Both of these were female. One was short and muscular with light hair like the other human and the other one was tall and dark with an imperious and angular face. She had a bright orange and yellow scarf tied around the top of her head allowing only a little puff of hair to stick out, tighter and more curly compared to the other humans.
They didn't seem to notice him.
Then on the other side of the street there sat a woman with long dark hair and large glasses leafing through a book under a tree.
A few more humans played a strange game, throwing a ball back and forth in one of the parks.
It was all rather nice really.
Another human walked past on his right, very large with tan skin, carrying a lot of weight around their middle. Timor tried not to stare. He had never seen a human like that before. Of course he had heard about them, though most of the humans he had seen were UNSC or UNSC contractors, and so had to pass certain physical tests to to be allowed in.
The civilians on the other hand came in al shapes and sizes In comparison.
And that is when he spotted him. He was a large man, very muscular sitting on a park bench. He had strange golden eyes and wore a tight blue ball cap over his hair.
Timor approached and sat down next to him, trying not to look obvious.
The man didn't look up but continued to scroll through something on his communications device. There was a package sitting next to him.
It looked very similar to white Timor was carrying.
Timor slipped a hand into the false pocket he wore and withdrew the wrapped packet sitting it on the bench beside him like the other man had.
They waited for a little bit and then Timor stood grabbed the other package and headed as if to grab a drink. The man did not look up and Timor continued his still down the street. The man with the dog was gone as he headed back toward the space port.
Hopefully he was going to be able to find some lodging somewhere.
He turned a corner into a short alleyway and ran right into the man with the dog.
He was standing in the alley, right I the center staring at Timor as if he had been expecting him. At his side the dog sat tail sweeping over the ground.
Timor stopped.
The human tilted it's head.
Timor went to turn around.
"You are going to want to stay where you are.
He felt his heart start to beat in his chest, hard.
He turned around slowly, "I'm sorry, I...."
He took a step back.
The slow swishing of the dog's tail stopped at that moment and it leaned forward on it's front legs ears pricked.
"I wouldn't try to run if I were you. My dog's top speed is thirty miles per hour, my top speed is around twenty without the cybernetic enhancements and then it's about thirty. The last time I checked, the top speed for a Tesraki was a good fifteen."
Timor paused
"And since you seem smaller, I would guess only about ten."
He had no idea if the human was right or not, but he didn't want to take the chance. He put up his hands and the human removed his glasses.
Timor was a bit shocked.
He KENEW he had recognized this human.
A flash from his childhood made him sure of it and he shrunk back slightly as the fleet admiral of the GA stepped forward. He frowned as he looked Timor over, his eyes scanning over him in sharp bursts and oscillations that made Timor dizzy to look at.
"Do I know you."
Timor shook his head.
Behind him he heard more footsteps and watched as a group of humans from earlier showed up. He saw the short muscular woman, the tall woman with the bandana, and behind them he saw the dark haired woman with glasses give a thumbs up to the man in the blue hat.
Timor knew he had been caught and his heart sank.
The man in the blue hat took his leisurely time walking over.
"Got it Ramirez?" Adam asked.
The blue hat man, Ramirez nodded and withdrew the package from his coat.
"Yes I do."
Timor went silent and did not try to resist. How could he? With so many humans watching and guarding him, he certainly had no chance, and was led into a dark concrete room in one of the buildings on the main walkway. The others scattered as they stepped inside and the only one accompanying him was the blue hat man and the Fleet Admiral.
This really could not have gotten any worse.
When the door to the dark concrete rom was open he was led in to find a tall blue Drev and another blond man sitting at a table and waiting for him.
The blond man looked strangely similar to the fleet admiral, though he was slightly taller and just a bit tinner with grey instead of green eyes.
He motioned timor to sit and Timor did as asked.
"I am going to say this once, and I promise it is the only deal you are going to get."
Timor waited.
"We won't involved the authorities other than us and you will be free to go about your life as long as you promise to find new work."
Timor waited.
"We want the name and location of your supplier."